Lil'59s or Cool Rails?

[Faber]

I'm considering putting sc sized buckers in one of my strats. I want H/H/H operation from it, with something clear yet humbucker like in the neck/mids and something hotter in the bridge. From reading, it seems that either the cool rails or the little 59s are what I'm looking for in the neck/mid. Let me hear the pros and cons of each, and how they compare

[HeavyBluesy]

ah youve asked the right person.

 

bridge: jb jr

middle: cool rails

neck: little 59

 

To me, the little 59 has THE jazz sound. The most distinguishing feature of it is in the higher pitched sounds from the bottom 2 or 3 strings. It has this warm almost bubbly/rubbery/blubbery? tone which seems so well suited for jazz(sorry for those adjectives i dont know how to describe it). So little 59 in the neck is a great pickup to back off to after doing more brittle screaming leads on the bridge.

 

As for cool rails, the sound is in between the jb jr and 59. It has good treble to it, but not like the bridge pickup when it comes to treble so its more balanced and can pass for multiple genres. It seems very balanced to me in that sense(nothing about it really stands out as a pickup but it sounds good overall), it has that in between sound, which I guess is what you might want in the middle afterall.

 

BTW I'm a guitar newb, but i have these pickups in my custom guitar and this is how they sound to me. Little 59 is my favorite pickup because I like jazz and blues and it nails those too. And since cool rails has more edge, its good in the middle so you can blend it in with the 59.

[duncan]

man oh man. its always confusing when people talk about the lil 59 for the strat, and say that its a medium output pickup.

 

the lil 59 for tele is one of the hottest tele pickups that SD makes. like, its got slightly more output than the hot rails.

[Karma1]

I'm not familiar with the Cool Rails, but I recently put a 59 in my Tele Thinline and it sounds great. I wanted a warmer, fatter, punchier bridge pickup for high gain leads and the 59 definitely gives me that. I installed it with series/parallel switching, although I hardly ever use it in parallel. However it's good to have that option if I ever want a bit more twang.

[Faber]

Thanks, interesting responses. Hmm, gonna ponder this some more